


And to Dust You Shall Return

by thelazy_punmaster



Series: Dust Universe [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Allergies, Angst, DON'T WORRY LEVI DOESN'T DIE, Don't Have to Know Canon, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Kidfic, Levi-centric (Shingeki no Kyojin), Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-13
Updated: 2015-04-13
Packaged: 2018-03-22 15:06:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3733384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelazy_punmaster/pseuds/thelazy_punmaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi Ackerman is not afraid of dust. </p><p>The story of Levi's first friend, and his relationship with messes through the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And to Dust You Shall Return

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first ever fic, and I wrote this in one hour out of a headcanon, but I thought I'd publish it here. Oh, right: it's unedited and I don't watch attack on titan, so things will be wrong.

Levi Ackerman used to enjoy messes.  
He couldn't let everything stay nice. When it was tidy, it felt to Levi like a mask of indifference the world wore to hide its feelings. He had to do something about it.  


* * *

They are unstoppable - the destructive team of Levi and Tekuna cannot be controlled.  
He is seven, and he has the dexterity and plans. She is six, and she has excuses and puppy-dog eyes. Together, they never fail to disturb the perfection of something,  even if they only take a blade of grass from an otherwise immaculate lawn. The two of them walk together until they reach their meeting place, a tree stump near a dry patch of dirt. Tekuna says, "Come on! What, are you scared?"  
Levi is not afraid of dust.  
So he dives in with her and covers himself in it, laughing. 

* * *

He is eight. She is seven. She is returning home with her mother from a visit, and there is an accident.

  
_The_  accident.

  
A man is running to bring news; the splinters of the cart are everywhere; and Levi is suffocating in the sounds of those treating the survivors who must still know that those people, just over there, were dead, and there was nothing to be done, and they worked on. There is dust still settling. A man lies dead in the broken wood. Levi is getting more and more agitated about his only real friend. Tekuna is on the other side, he tells himself. She might be dying. (He refuses to think of the possibility that she already has.) The dust is still in the air, and Levi is almost certain that it is impossible for it to stay clouded in the air for as long as it has. And though he strains to catch a glimpse of her, he can't see through the fog of dirt.

But Levi is not afraid of dust.  
So he walks to her side, beyond relieved to find her okay. She is okay. Her mother isn't.

Levi feels awful for being grateful for one person's life more than he is upset over two people's deaths. He pushes the guilty feelings out of his head, locks them in a safe, and keeps moving on with life, brushing the dust from his pants. 

* * *

He is nine and she is eight. Ever since the accident, she's been quiet. Mrs. Kajinei had seen the cart coming towards theirs, and, being one of the designers of the 3-D maneuver gear, had instantly been able to determine how to angle herself in order to protect her daughter from all the shrapnel that would inevitably fall. That saved Tekuna's life. She still is injured - Levi isn't sure, but he thinks it has something to do with inhaling bits of glass and splinters - but it is nearly nothing, until her body goes wacky. She develops what seem like infinite severe allergies. Levi is never going to let her die of something so silly as that, not when she survived the accident. Whenever a bee comes near the two of them, he tries to catch it in order to get stung instead of her. It is a little pain. Levi can deal with pain.  


* * *

He is fine, and so is she. One day, Levi finds a little shack hidden in the woods, and he decides that it is to become their clubhouse. He has a house where he belongs, just him with his friend, and maybe things are looking up. Levi is sure to dust before coming back with her.

The first time they both are there, they simply look around, and Tekunav hugs him and smiles and smiles. The next day, they meet up and then they rearrange furniture  - it has to be amazing if it's their new friend hideout - and work until they can't stand up anymore. He collapses into a chair; she jumps on the sofa with gusto. And then, years and years worth of built-up grime rise to form a huge cloud of dust around her.

Levi didn't think to be clean the sofa. 

* * *

Levi is not afraid of dust.  
He just can't see and the air is dry and he can't think. He's trying to move, but he can't. He's disconnected. Taking a shaky breath of air that burns his lungs, he looks as the dust clears, finally - how long has it been? Seconds? Minutes? Years? - and there's his only friend, writhing on the ground, clawing at her neck in a desperate attempt to get to oxygen, face red and swollen and more terrifying than anything he could have imagines, and just stands there, not even thinking to move, covered in dust, as she dies from his mistake, from his pathetic attempt to please her.

He can't do anything.

It was his idea.  
It was his fault.  
He killed her.

* * *

Levi Ackerman hates messes. His life is plenty messy. His job is messy. No one needs to know all of the mess. Mask it with indifference. If it's tidy, it looks controlled. That's what he can do, and he will do it. On his own, he will never fail to clean up the world, even if all he can do is see a spot of dirt and wipe it up. It is a little bit of pain right there. He cannot handle any more pain. He cannot handle any more friends.

* * *

There is dust on the wardrobe.

Levi Ackerman isn't scared of dust. He's just maybe a little scared of what dust has done to people he knows (and yes, he is one of these people). It covers them in a shadowy-white coat where you don't know yesterday or tomorrow, where things are only important now and only important for some reason that is impossible to explain.  
He once read that dust is made up of teeny tiny things - pieces of feathers, dirt, dead skin cells (although he's certainly been surrounded by much worse, it still creeps him out to think about it), and lint.  
He thinks that it's not just that - it's the remains of one charred feather left from when someone flew-  really flew  -until they burned themselves up with sheer joy, the only energy they had left. It's the dirt from the graves children are buried in, young, too young, without having time to really rise from the ashes before returning to them.  
It's the skin of people, not just cells. It's a thing never to be removed, more human, in many ways, than a heart. No, skin is pieces of people floating away - people he's failed to save, who will only come back in the form of a thin coating of all that as they try to hold on to anything whole.  
It's the loose threads gathered along with the bits of fuzz that disappear from your most comfortable clothes. They don't stay with the fabric of society, and simply become ghosts.  
Dust is not made up of small bits of things, it's made of huge bits, lost and faded to look like small.  
Dust is unsightly.  
Dust is unnerving.  
Dust is a reminder of things past, things that cannot be preserved.  
Dust is another way of reminding the world that Levi is a murderer.

So Levi will scrub it away, scrub the dust, scrub those painful memories away.

But dust is a part of Levi. It will not go from his soul, no matter how hard he scrubs.

Levi Ackerman isn't afraid of dust.  
He isn't.

He is afraid of himself.


End file.
